line http://americanbookreview.org ON Amber Dermont reviews Stephanie Fiorelli, Adam Koehler, line and Andrew Palmer, eds. AVER Y : Matthew Roberson reviews AN ANTHOLOG Y O F Fabrice Rozié, Esther Allen, and Guy Walter, eds. NE W FICTION Avery House Press AS YOU WERE Say ING : AMERIC A N WRITERS RESPOND TO “The great pleasure is in seeing THEIR FRENCH CONTEMPOR A RIES how the short fiction tradition is built upon, skewed, and subverted.” Dalkey Archive Press “As You Were Saying is a successful adventure in illustrating the Gabriel Cutrufello reviews unpredictable pleasures of encounter, Richard Katrovas dialogue, and connection.” THE YE A RS O F SM A SHING BRICKS : AN ANECDOT A L MEMOIR Bruce Holsapple reviews Carnegie Mellon University Press Philip Whalen; Michael Rothenberg, ed. “Katrovas at times seems to be dressing up over-sentimentalized THE COLLECTED POEMS O F memories of a painful young PHILIP WH A LEN adulthood with seemingly profound observations.” Wesleyan University Press “This poet is a master in the use of self-regard.” Stephen Burn reviews J. Peder Zane, ed. THE TOP TEN : WRITERS PICK THEIR Sam Truitt reviews Hannah Weiner; FA VORITE BOOKS Patrick F. Durgin, ed. Norton HA NN A H WEINER ’S “With the right writer, the list can OPEN HOUSE be a revealing window on to their Kenning Editions formative influences.” “A great boon of Hannah Weiner’s Open House lies in gathering her career-wide formal inflections in one place for the first time.” The Human Line Marilyn Kallet reviews ELLEN BASS Ellen Bass THE HUM A N LINE Kirby Olson reviews Copper Canyon Press Tony Trigilio “The Human Line is a ALLEN GINSBERG ’S well-made prayer for peace UDDHIST OETICS B P in the guise of art.” Southern Illinois University Press “Ginsberg’s aggression toward Buddhism needs to be carefully positioned when we think of Ginsberg as a ‘Buddhist.’” LineOnLine announces reviews abr featured exclusively on ABR’s website. Innovation Never Sleeps @ July–August 2008 29.5 line ONline http://americanbookreview.org READ AND RESPOND Matthew Roberson digression, closure—what- AS YOU WERE Say ING : ever reaction the initial text AMERIC A N WRITERS RESPOND TO inspired.” THEIR FRENCH CONTEMPOR A RIES The results: Luckily, everything one would hope Edited by Fabrice Rozié, Esther Allen, to find with these writers and and Guy Walter these premises. In the Dar- Dalkey Archive Press rieussecq/Moody piece, a http://www.dalkeyarchive.com female, first-person narrator 112 pages; paper, $9.50 recounts her complicated, even pathological, love for a horribly disfigured man—a As You Were Saying: American Writers Re- love that centers on his inju- spond to Their French Contemporaries opens with ries and diminishes when he a preface by Jean-David Lévitte, French Ambassador receives cosmetic surgery that to the US. makes him more “normal.” Yes, the French Ambassador to the US—writing We then receive an inter- a preface to a Dalkey Archive Press collection of estingly skewed version of short fictions, writing that he actually worries about events from the point of view the unwillingness of American publishers to list of the male character, who translated books, writing about the need to reverse desires to become “normal” this trend, so that French authors, in particular, can mostly because he resents the “reach new readers…[and] be read in translation in pity fueling his partner’s love. the U.S.” In both, a shared focus on the And, it seems as if Lévitte (not some consultant depths of characters, and on copywriter) actually wrote the piece—and as if, as he the psychology of attraction, says, he himself really loves “books and was educated and love, and even the power by reading literature from all over the world.” of fetish. Let’s compare this to the latest “Op/Ed” Equally cooperative released by the US Ambassador to France, Craig about exploring common Roberts Stapleton. In it, he does not celebrate the ar- characters and themes—Lau- rival of a new American intellectual effort in France; rens and Olen Butler, who rather, he cheers about an upcoming visit from “an created a unified piece that American vessel not seen in a French port since May starts with a lyrically beautiful 2001: an aircraft carrier.” No kidding. recitation on the many, many things for which one woman As You Were Saying is a successful waits, and then builds to a ton- adventure in illustrating the ally different, yet equally charged, dramatic scene perhaps, all the other of the book’s texts. Why, one that reveals why she waits, and waits, and waits; and might speculate, didn’t these writers draw together unpredictable pleasures of encounter, Bouillier and Everett, who pass a narrative thread in expected ways? Why—on the American side of dialogue, and connection. almost seamlessly to explore the desire driving one the partnership—did Federman and Ducornet fix on man’s obsessive pursuit of an unavailable woman. those details from which they spun out seemingly Okay. Point made, and maybe it’s an easy point, Some pieces take different, but equally engag- tangential responses? (Or are those responses actu- even a cheap shot, but it deserves making because it ing approaches—those by Claudel and Hemon, for ally tangential or simply more subtly drawn than this suggests that while a variety of writers will attempt to example, trace narratives tied more by context or reader realizes?) These stories encourage thought create interesting, thoughtful, and successful art—art theme than specific characters or plot. In Claudel’s about not just cooperation and collaboration but that develops communication and collaboration be- piece, we receive the story of the sterility of upper- about difference and determined autonomy. tween cultures—only some of them have the genuine middle-class life. In Hemon’s follow up, one im- In other words, As You Were Saying succeeds interest and encouragement of their social leaders. migrant man’s struggle to achieve just such station in all the ways one of its editors, Esther Allen, hoped So we find, in a way, only one voice in what (the flaws of which he can’t know). Or, Lang’s and it would, as a successful adventure in varieties of should have been the first collaborative part of this Wideman’s pieces have in common, mostly, shared talents illustrating the unpredictable pleasures of book. images and styles. encounter, dialogue, and connection. Not so, of course, in the book’s remaining A few of the pieces don’t seem to connect. But does the book somehow succeed in illus- conversations, where French authors Marie Dar- From Roubaud’s version of a classical puzzle, the trating successful cross-cultural collaborations— rieussecq, Camille Laurens, Jacques Roubaud, Lydie Josephus problem, in which is posed the question of challenging French writers to find their particular Salvayre, Grégoire Bouillier, Philippe Claudel, and how a soldier not only survives certain death in battle, beginnings and American writers to somehow negoti- Luc Lang compose joint texts with American writ- but in doing so, impresses his victorious enemies so ate approaches they wouldn’t have necessarily taken ers (respectively) Rick Moody, Robert Olen Butler, well that they spare him afterward, Federman (from or even considered, perhaps in a distinctly American Raymond Federman, Rikki Ducornet, Percival Ev- France, though now an American writing in English, way? Or do the pieces begin with but then escape erett, Aleksandar Hemon, and John Edgar Wideman. mostly) draws only the idea of death, and carcasses, national differences, making something outside our Two more-than-impressive groups working together as fuel for his (exceedingly funny) riff on resurrec- usual categories? Yes, and yes, it seems, though this (with the help of translators) under the following, tion. From Salvayre’s tale of a brilliant, ugly man’s reader doesn’t dare say more, for fear of revealing very open-ended arrangement: “The French novel- pursuit of a dumb, beautiful woman, Ducornet seems his inadequate and likely stereotypical assumptions ists [composed] the first part of each text, which to have only taken the idea of a beautiful woman—in about both cultures. Best read it yourself. Do. [was] then translated into English and given to the her story a whore now past her prime. Interestingly Americans,” who responded “to it in any way at all: enough, however, these seemingly disconnected sto- FC2 will publish Matthew Roberson’s new novel, continuation, variation, juxtaposition, contradiction, ries don’t disappoint; they, in fact, intrigue more than, Impotent, in spring 2009. July–August 2008 Page 1 L GR APH OF A MIND MOVIN G Bruce Holsapple statement-based poetry to a nonrepresentational be THE COLLECTED POEMS O F mode focused on invention, a heuristic procedure punched, cracks made in it to release the PHILIP WH A LEN often taking the lyric subject itself as its object. That power, beauty, whatever; the act Philip Whalen is, the poetry is not grounded in representations of breaks us, a radical force like sex not lightly Edited by Michael Rothenberg self nor in statements about the world, for instance, to be used. assertions of value, but rather in “motions” of the Foreword by Gary Snyder The poems are not so much expressions of an mind as it composes. The following is also from Introduction by Leslie Scalapino authorial self as kinds of exploration, involving loos- 1959, from a new kind of poem. Wesleyan University Press ening from one’s intentions, akin to Jackson Pollack’s http://www.wesleyan.edu/wespress Tuned in on my own frequency drip paintings and John Cage’s compositions. The 932 pages; cloth, $49.95 I watch myself looking poems don’t aspire to elegance and monumentality, Lying abed late in the morning even with the book-length Scenes of Life at the Capi- With music, thinking of Y.